


Zombie

by mockingbirdsoul (rosecreati)



Category: Gangsta. (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Cohabitation, Developing Relationship, Drug Use, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 15:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12038550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecreati/pseuds/mockingbirdsoul
Summary: Every part of herself regained seemed like another lost in some way. Alex and Nicolas, and the scars they bear.





	Zombie

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the original Z ficlet for the alphabet drabbles. It takes place in that same AU, so Nic and Alex are a bit closer. Just a bit. 
> 
> I wasn't going to post this originally, but here it is anyway. Enjoy!

It had been surprising at first, how quickly and quietly her first days in the office had passed by. Disorienting almost, though not quite in a bad way. She’d take desk work, housework and even odd jobs if the opportunity rang over turning tricks in back alleys any day.

But things soon changed. Routines formed, schedules shifted, habits and quirks became known and almost comforting in their familiarity. Even the sound of soft snores coming from the couch was strangely soothing.

Alex flicked her eyes from the notepad in front of her to the pair of legs hanging off the arm of the couch, absently nodding along to the voice on the other line.

“Yes, alright then,” she intoned with a bright falsetto, jotting down notes with her free hand. “I’ll have you penciled in for the upcoming Tuesday. We’ll see you then. Have a wonderful day.”

She placed the phone back on the receiver and sighed. Business was slow on weekends. With Worick booked for other appointments and her occasional gigs at _Bastard_ , most assumed they were closed. On one hand, she was glad the guys could take a breather from more demanding, dangerous jobs, but they also had a bottom line to think of. Worick wouldn’t hear a word of adding her pay from _Bastard_ to their income, either. She needed to keep that money for herself, he’d told her. For when she could finally get out of the city.

Her fingers curled tightly around the pen. That day was coming sooner and sooner, wasn’t it?

_Where you gonna run off to now?_

Alex grimaced and brought her fingers to the sudden throbbing behind her forehead. Dread fills her. Already?

_You seriously think there's anything out there for you?_

_You'll lose your way and come crawling back on your knees. Just like you always do._

The ache sharpened, enough to draw out a pained hiss from her. On impulse, she yanked open the desk drawer and sifted through its contents for her tranquilizer.

Only to find nothing.

For a panicked second, something constricted in her chest and her breathing shallowed until her memory finally caught up with her. Her eyes snapped to the coffee table, to where the medicine bottle fell in sight (dimly, she was irritated with herself for having left it there this morning).

The next few seconds were a rush of movement and a cloud of pain and spiteful whispers in her head. Before she knew it, she was kneeling at the table, medicine in her hands, her breathing still slightly labored, and then—

Nothing.

Everything stilled.

Alex furrowed her brow, bewildered. The little white tablets were just within her grasp, but she made no move to uncap the bottle.

She waited, testing the air. There was no voice taunting her, no slow drip of blood or flashes of a grisly grin, despite the chill still prickling along her skin. Alex bit her lip, feeling a bubble of uncertainty swell in her chest.

Then, slowly, she let herself decompress. Leaning forward on her elbows, she cradled her head in her palm. The throbbing under her skull didn’t recede, but her mind was clear.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

It was okay. She was okay.

Wasn’t she?

A tap on her shoulder nearly made her jump out of her skin. Alex swiveled in the direction of the couch, towards the man she’d mistakenly thought had been asleep. Nicolas cocked an eyebrow at her reaction, and despite herself, she huffed.

“Don’t scare me like that,” she breathed.

Nicolas lifted himself from the cushions, drawing one of his knees – the one he just bumped her with – up to his chest as he signed to her.

 _“Not my fault you’re skittish as a cat,”_ he retorted, pausing to crane his neck. _“How do you think I felt, waking up to a windstorm blowing past me?”_

At that, her annoyance dissipated in an instant, replaced by guilt. “I-I’m sorry.”

_“I was just kidding.”_

“Still, I…” She started, but faltered as he began to sign something else.

_“What are you waiting for?”_

Alex blinked, not catching his meaning until he angled his head at the bottle of pills still in her hand. At the pointed look her pinned her with, she flushed hot. How long had he been watching her?

“N-Nothing,” she stammered. Then, thinking better, she discarded the pills and repeated it in sign.

Confusion crossed his features, which then quickly twisted into a wary scowl. How he managed such sharp looks straight out of sleep was beyond her.

 _“False alarm,”_ she tried to explain, taking care to form the correct gestures, hoping they seemed sincere. _“I’m okay. Really, I am.”_

The answer, unsurprisingly, didn’t appear to satisfy him. His eyes narrowed, almost admonishingly, but he didn’t press her any further. A deep kind of rumble eased out of him as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Alex mimed the action, feeling even guiltier than before. He may not be as gentle as Worick, but Nicolas didn’t question her, never demanded anything of her. It felt wrong to take advantage of that.

A creak of springs broke the silence. She glanced over to see Nicolas reaching for something under the couch. A moment later, he procured an unopened Perrier bottle and held it out to her.

“For me?” she asked. He hummed lowly and motioned for her to sit on the couch.

Alex wavered, gauging the spare space at his feet before gingerly complying. Once settled, she took the bottle from his awaiting hand, fingers curling around the glass, brushing lightly against his.

 _“Thank you,”_ she signed, albeit awkwardly with the Perrier in one hand. Strange how no matter the number of times she said it, sometimes unthinkingly or out of nervous habit, the gesture never became some empty pleasantry, never lost any of the significance it carried since the day she first signed it to him.

Even stranger, then, was how Nicolas made no move to distance himself from her like he normally would. He only watched from behind disheveled bangs as she unscrewed the cap with shaky hands. She sat straight-backed and composed, but inwardly, she felt as though she was shrinking in on herself. She was too aware of one of his legs outstretched behind her while the other was drawn up beside her, just shy of nudging her thigh.

What puzzled her, though, was how it _didn’t_ discomfort her. Not in the slightest. Just the opposite, in fact.

Heat curled itself in her stomach, and she hastily took a sip to dispel it. The water was lukewarm, long bereft of any coolness from the fridge, but she didn’t mind. It was mild on her tongue and calmed her in a way an icy drink wouldn’t have.

Off to the side, she heard Nicolas yawn. Alex looked over to find him rubbing his eyes, and nearly kicked herself for being so thoughtless.

“Here.” She offered him the Perrier. He paused, peering at the bottle and then at her through sleep-hazed eyes. Alex squirmed under his scrutiny. “Or I could go make some coffee—”

Abruptly, he cut her off by swiping the bottle from her hand – startling her – and downing half of its contents in a single swig. Blinking away her surprise, she folded her hands in her lap and took the opportunity to observe him. His movements were less sluggish from before, but still not quite back to normal.

Alex tore her gaze away from the way his lips wrapped around the rim of the bottle, letting it land instead on the bandaged arm propped on his knee. She found herself relieved again that there were not difficult jobs lined up for today.

“How are you feeling?” she asked once he was finished. “Better now?”

 _“Slept it off,”_ she signed dismissively as he handed her back the Perrier. _“Any calls?”_

“Just one for next week,” she replied, eyeing his mussed hair and the drawn set of his features. He didn’t look all that well-rested. “Sorry for waking you.”

He brow pinched in irritation. _“I said I wasn’t serious.”_

“I know, but you came home late last night,” she said, twisting to face him better. “You should rest more.”

_“Not tired.”_

She frowned at that. The pale shadows underneath his eyes told her another story, but Alex didn’t press him, seeing as he’d backed off of her. They’ve gotten good at this over the past few months. Learning and minding each other’s boundaries, knowing not to cross lines.

But those lines had blurred quite a bit, hadn’t they?

Idly, she swept her eyes over him. Over the tags hanging from his neck, the bruise at the corner of his mouth, the plaster on his cheek. When she reached his eyes, he was staring just as intently at her. She averted her gaze down to the Perrier in her hands.

She remembered when this would’ve been impossible for the two of them. This closeness. No. _Nearness_ , she amended. That word was…better. Better suited for them. Less personal. Mutable.

Unbidden, she felt her shoulders droop and her lips press into a solemn line. That’s right, she reminded herself. Whatever this was, it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. None of it could.

Taking calls, heading out to the market, cooking meals he would only ever call so-so, if only just to pick on her in his own indirect way. The quarrels over borrowed clothing, the nights spent at clinic bedsides, the disjointed conversations in sign and spoken word…she wasn’t supposed to get used to any of it. Not when she was slowly recollecting a life before Ergastulum, from before the TB blotted out everything else until she knew nothing but the city and its smeared, musty-aired backstreets. East Gate was little more than a faraway notion and visions of brokenness and hardship, but it was _there_. A forgotten place of belonging.

But…was it too late to return to that place? If anyone had been waiting for her, they probably figured she wouldn’t come back, or that she was long dead by now.

Maybe that was true in some way. Every part of herself regained seemed like another lost somehow. Was she still the same girl from before falling into Barry’s web of lies? Or had that Alex Benedetto been swallowed up in the city long before being thrown a lifeline by this pair of Handymen? She didn’t have enough pieces of the past to determine it, but part of her dreaded an answer.

_Don’t kid yourself. You know what you are._

Pain lanced sharply through her skull. Alex pressed fingers to the bridge of her nose. She tried to take her thoughts far away, but the voice followed her, dripped over her like blood out of open, sneering wounds.

_You’ve done this before. Shit gets tough and you make tracks like the selfish whore you are._

_Left your poor old man and kid brother behind to make a living off of spreading your legs in back alleys._

“Stop it,” she whispered (though whether to the voice or herself, she wasn’t certain). Her hand tightened around the Perrier bottle.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Get a grip.

The couch cushion shifted next to her. Alex moved her trembling hand aside, half-expecting to see rivulets of blood spilling over bullet-torn clothing and ashen flesh.

To her immense relief, there was only Nicolas. He had leaned in closer to her, just barely enough for her to see the corners of his mouth down-turned and tense, the caution drifting in his eyes. The hand at his knee was now suspended in the space between them, hovering at a precipice of uncertainty. Finally, he signed to her.

“Meds?” she read aloud, lifting her eyes to meet his. Then, wearily, she shook her head. “No. No, not yet.”

“Why not?”

His voice caught her off guard. Not the sound of it. Just that he used it all with her. Alex often wondered if doing so made him uncomfortable. She hoped not. For all its raggedness and distortion, it pleased her whenever he spoke. Nicolas always had a strong presence – to Alex at least – but his voice was like an affirmation of it. A reminder that he was there with her and Worick when the silence was too much to bear. It, too, was another unfamiliar thing turned familiar and assuring.

Why indeed, she thought. It’d be easy, wouldn’t it? To let the pills do their job and numb everything out, to silence the voices and their cruel words.

But words couldn’t hurt her the way hands had before.

“I just—” She faltered. “I can—”

Wait a little longer?

Alex pursed her lips, squeezing the Perrier bottle slightly before depositing it on the table next to the tranquilizer. Freeing her hands.

 _“Fine—this is much is fine. I can handle it,”_ she signed, motions steady and deliberate. _“It’s—I’m okay like this.”_

She studied his eyes as they read the gestures. How they narrowed in what she hoped was concentration. How something unreadable flickered in them when they leveled back up to hers.

His mouth opened. Closed.

Eventually, he reclined back against the arm of the couch, eyes shuttering to a close. When they opened again, she could see the torpor lingering in them.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, in earnest, dropping her hands back to her lap.

He rolled his eyes. _“You apologize too much.”_

“I…yeah, I know.” The words left her through a drawn-out exhale, and she felt lighter without their weight. She lifted a hand to tuck a few stray strands of hair behind her ear before signing. _“I’ll go now. Get some rest.”_

His expression changed then, ever so slightly. Lips parting, the tight slant of his brow leveling, eyes softening. All in minute fractions she never would have recognized months ago (not on _him_ , anyway).

_“What’s your rush?”_

In the same way his voice had done earlier, the motions of his hands closed the distance between her awareness and reality, anchored her in the here and now. Alex glanced up to meet eyes again and found herself asking the same question.

She wasn’t sure what her own expression conveyed to him, but she knew it wasn’t guarded, that it wasn’t asking him to stop. If it was, those same hands wouldn’t still be reaching for her, wouldn’t now have a more solid hold on her, wouldn’t be gently tugging her forward.

She wouldn’t be letting them.

“Let me know if you’re injuries—” she tried to say, but he dismissed her worries with a thump on the back of her head, pinning it back down against his shoulder.

“Fool.”

He couldn’t sign to her like this, so he had no other choice but to use his voice. Not taking into account that he just used it to insult her, she was glad to hear it, to feel the warm vibrations from his chest underneath hers. Slowly, she let herself relax against him.

Right. This voice. This touch. They were different.

His words. His hands. They wouldn’t hurt her.

Sometime later, his breathing evened out and his hold on her slackened, the bandages on his arm whispering against the fabric of her dress. The hand on her head had smoothed down her hair to rest in the space between her shoulders, and his other arm hung limply off the edge of the cushions. She craned her head enough to see that his eyes were closed.

Her gaze shifted momentarily to the desk. The phone had been silent for quite some time now, and Alex suspected it would be for the rest of the day. She exhaled slowly, feeling the tension ebb out of her. The dull ache in her head was still there, unremitting, but her vision was clear, her mind unencumbered by whispers of the dead. There was only Nicolas and his steady breathing, matched by the ceiling fan blades rotating in slow, quiet strokes above them.

Alex rested her head back against his shoulder, carefully wound her arms underneath his back and closed her eyes. This nearness. This was okay.

They were okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a weakness for OTPs taking care of each other. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


End file.
